


The Truth About Inventors

by cosmicmoron



Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Oneshot, dannyfenton, dannyphantom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-20
Updated: 2019-03-20
Packaged: 2019-11-26 10:35:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18179492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmicmoron/pseuds/cosmicmoron
Summary: In which we hear the truth about inventors from the perspective of their child.





	The Truth About Inventors

Danny’s parents had been avoiding him for a long time now. Intentional or not, Danny wasn’t sure but he knew one thing for sure: It hurt like hell. The avoiding began when Danny’s mother had a scientific breakthrough while dusting off all of her husband’s and her own tech. Or so she had said. Danny wouldn’t be surprised if she was down there upgrading some of the techs that his dad had made to make sure it wouldn’t blow into pieces or something like that. 

But a scientific breakthrough meant less time for the family and more time for inventing stuff. In the beginning, Danny had tried to join, since he had nothing else to do and Jazz wasn’t around to be pranked on since she was in college, but his mother had snapped at him multiple times because now he had to take care of two idiots in the lab instead of just one. So he had left the place to give his parents some space. Mostly his mom, Maddie.

Danny wasn’t any help for his mom, neither as a son nor as a hero. That was at least what he told himself that day.

He didn’t really think that much about it after he got into his room and talked with his two friends on the phone. They, Tucker and Sam, had convinced Danny that it was just a period and that his mom would apologize and be all loving when she’s done inventing stuff. Just like she had been those few times when Danny slipped up and his parents had noticed him limping or when he fell asleep while using his algebra books and homework as a pillow. 

Plus, pizza.  
Every time his parents were too focused on inventing new weapons to make food for their kid, they would just yell at him to order pizza with dad’s credit card. which was nice, of course, but after a whole week with pepperoni pizza and fries, it would get boring quickly. 

But after a week they would usually come upstairs with the new technology and tell Danny all about how they were gonna use it to destroy The Phantom Ghost, as they liked to call him. Or it if you asked Maddie. She really wasn’t a fan of her son’s secret hero side. 

When they first told Danny about how they wanted to experiment on the ghost, he had suddenly looked pale and had tried really hard not to run screaming into his room. His dad had seen this as a sign that Danny just needed to hear more about it so that he could “man up a bit”, as he so beautifully called it (can you sense the irony?) and started showing his son how to do it or explained it with drawings and such. Danny had, of course, gotten used to the mention of torture by now, but he was still trying to get away each time the “ghost scum” were mentioned.

But it had been three weeks now and Danny felt more terrible than he ever had. This, of course, was noticed by his two friends, but Danny declined all of Sam and Tucker’s invitations to go hang out at The Nasty Burger. He had also told them that he would be fine fighting the ghosts that went out of the portal alone. Not many ghosts left the portal since his parents were down there, but some of the clever ghosts had turned invisible and intangible and gone out to hurt either Danny or random people walking down the street. And since his parents didn’t care about him being out late, Danny slept less and fought ghosts more.

Danny felt lonely.  
He had not really thought about it before, but he enjoyed the company of his parents. He liked listening to his dad talking with enthusiasm, even though it was about tearing him apart “molecule by molecule”. He loved seeing his mom happy and loving, even though it was all towards Danny’s father and not himself. Seeing the people he loved happy and safe made him happy. It made him feel like he had completed just a small bit of his responsibility. But now he had to settle on the sounds of machines whirring downstairs instead of the usual laughter. It was like the whole house was colder. And he hated it.

And the worst part of it? It was all his fault, to begin with.  
If he didn’t accidentally turn on the ghost portal, the whole world didn’t have to suffer. He wouldn’t be half human, half ghost and his parents didn’t have to make new guns constantly because the ghosts became almost immune to all their defenses. Sam and Tucker wouldn’t have to put themselves in danger to fight the ghosts with Danny.  
So yeah, it was all his fault and he hated it. He hated himself.


End file.
